Media consultant John Brabender and political consultant Michael Long took the stand at Melvin's corruption trial Monday to say they made the key decisions on TV commercials and other Melvin campaign efforts when she was still a Superior Court judge running for the Supreme Court.

Melvin, 56, and her suspended aide, Janine Orie, 58, are on trial on charges they conspired to use Melvin's state-funded staffers, or those of her sister, former state Sen. Jane Orie, to campaign for Melvin. The charges cover Melvin's losing bid for the Supreme Court in 2003 and her successful campaign when she won a seat on the state's highest court in 2009.

Melvin is suspended from her seat on the state's highest court.

Several former staffers for Melvin and Sen. Orie have testified for the Allegheny County district attorney's office that they helped coordinate Melvin's TV ads, as well as more routine tasks including tracking incoming checks for political fundraising events, distributing campaign signs and helping Melvin fill out questionnaires from groups whose political endorsement she sought.

But Brabender, a principle in the Pittsburgh-based media consulting firm Brabender Cox, testified he didn't recall any input from either Melvin's staff or Sen.

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Orie's when his firm put together a campaign commercial in 2003.

"Nobody would have been involved in that except for myself," Brabender said, going on to joke, "I'm too arrogant to let anybody else do that."

On cross-examination from Deputy District Attorney Lawrence Claus, Brabender acknowledged having nothing to do with the campaign's more mundane tasks, including designing and ordering yard signs and said he had nothing to do with Melvin's 2009 campaign.

Long testified that he essentially ran that winning 2009 campaign and, like Brabender, said the staffs of Melvin and the senator didn't assist his Commonwealth Strategies Solutions to create a TV ad or otherwise run the campaign. He did, however, acknowledge meeting or communicating with Janine Orie, Jane Orie, and the senator's then-chief of staff, Jamie Pavlot.

"The principle decisions in this campaign were made by me," Long testified.

On cross-examination, Long acknowledged learning after the 2009 campaign that one Melvin staffer, law clerk Molly Creenan, was a court employee and said he didn't know during the 2009 campaign that court employees weren't allowed to do any political work. Claus used that and other acknowledgments to cast doubt on whether Long knew enough to say, definitively, whether any illegal campaigning was done by state workers.

"How about people doing things in offices where they shouldn't be?" Claus asked, referring to political work witnesses have said was done in Melvin's chambers and the senator's office. "You didn't know about that, did you?"

Long attempted to minimize Janine Orie's involvement in the campaign by testifying that political emails were sent to her primarily because she coordinated Melvin's court schedule so Janine Orie could also help avoid conflicts in scheduling campaign events and could usually reach the judge when Melvin might otherwise be incommunicado.

But on cross-examination, Claus introduced a couple of emails in which Janine Orie seems to be giving orders to Long and his staff, including one in which she stresses the need for all campaign workers to "be on the same page."

"I was never asked by Janine to do anything, ever," Long insisted.

Long acknowledged, however, that Sen. Orie was involved in some meetings on Melvin's campaign.

Jane Orie, 51, resigned her seat after she was convicted last year of misusing her own state-paid staff on her own campaigns, crimes for which she's serving 2 1/2 to 10 years in prison. The former lawmaker was acquitted at her own trial, however, on charges she used her staff to campaign for Melvin.

Jane Orie and Pavlot are unindicted co-conspirators in the Melvin case and Pavlot has testified extensively, under a grant of immunity, about work she and other Senate staffers did on Melvin's campaigns.

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